A Socialist Labor Party Statement—

The Military Budget

Who really benefits? Who really loses?

Here’s what the Socialist Labor
Party says.

While issuing calls for
workers to accept drastic cutbacks in social programs, politicians on Capitol
Hill are
eagerly approving dramatic increases in another area of the budget—militarism.

If the Reagan administration has its way, spending on militarism in the
next five years will total a staggering $1.5 trillion. Among the alarming
implications
of resurgent militarism that are already being felt are: the revival of
the draft; a growing U.S. military presence in Central America, Africa,
Europe
and the Middle
East; new, more powerful and more accurate nuclear weapons systems; and
serious talk about a so-called “limited” nuclear war. These disturbing trends
should prompt all workers to ask themselves, “Who really benefits
from militarism?”

The politicians voting billions more for the Pentagon claim that bolstering
militarism is necessary to preserve “national security.” Yet
to offset the costs of militarism, the same politicians are making life
less secure and more desperate
for millions of working people. While lining the pockets of defense contractors
with billions in defense appropriations, Congress is cutting nutrition,
health, unemployment and other social programs that the poor and disadvantaged
have
been forced to rely on, meager as such programs are. Indeed, all workers
will pay
dearly for the military budget, which averages out to more than $2,000
per family in 1981. This figure will rise to $4,800 by 1986.

Many have already expressed their opposition to one manifestation of resurgent
militarism—the draft registration initiated by the Carter administration.
At least 400,000 18- and 19-year-olds have decided to risk a possible felony
prosecution
rather than register for the draft. Such opposition has dimmed ruling-class
hopes that workers had forgotten the genocidal U.S. aggression in Vietnam
that accompanied
the last draft.

Despite differences on how to proceed in the face of such opposition, however,
the ruling class remains firmly committed to building up the armed forces.
Though Reagan feigned opposition to a peacetime—though not a wartime—draft
registration, he has not made good on his pledge to abandon the current
registration program. In fact, Reagan is committed to increasing the 2.l-million
member
military by 10 percent.

Realization of this goal is being facilitated, in part, by capitalism’s
growing inability to provide jobs for workers. Unemployment, especially among
minority youth, has resulted in higher enlistment rates in the misnamed “all
volunteer” force (AVF). However, the racism, sexism, authoritarianism and
low pay enlistees are subjected to continue to produce record attrition rates.
Though Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger recently noted that Reagan “wants
very much to retain the volunteer army as long as he can,” various
alternative plans for compulsory military service are being formulated
by Congress and the
Pentagon, while the current draft registration continues.

Reduced funding for social programs and the prospect of military conscription
are not the only negative features of resurgent militarism affecting workers.
To these must be added the horrible consequences of a more belligerent
U.S. foreign policy. Already, the world’s most repressive dictatorships, from South
Africa to South Korea, are receiving strengthened support from U.S. imperialism.
Such regimes regard such increased support as a green light to step up their
brutal oppression of workers and peasants. In addition, the U.S. war machine
has dispatched weapons and “advisers” to assist a savage El
Salvadoran regime that continues to drench the democratic aspirations of
an entire people
in blood.

Of course, getting U.S. workers to support the Reagan administration’s
efforts to prop up brutal totalitarian regimes and to crush national liberation
struggles the world over is no easy task. In a desperate effort to rally
such support, ruling-class propagandists have pulled out all the stops on
their cold
war propaganda campaign, seeking to characterize struggles like that in
El Salvador as the product of “Soviet support of international terrorism.” But
more and more workers are refusing to buy this fraudulent justification
for increasing U.S. military involvement in El Salvador and elsewhere.

Indeed, there are encouraging signs of increasing working-class opposition
to the manifestations of U.S. militarism. Opposition to the draft and to
nuclear
arms proliferation is growing. In addition, many people reject U.S. intervention
in Central America. For example, a recent survey found that only 2 percent
of those polled think the United States should send troops to assist the
Salvadoran
junta. Only 19 percent supported military aid.

Notwithstanding such public opinion, however, the U.S. ruling class will
continue its escalation of militarism as long as there are profit interests,
which benefit
from it. Accordingly, active opposition to the profit-motivated capitalist
system, which underlies militarism, is needed to prevent another Vietnam-style
U.S. military
intervention—or worse.

In joining with the growing number of working people who are condemning
and taking a stand against the draft and militarism, the Socialist Labor
Party
therefore
stresses the fact that U.S. militarism is rooted in the capitalist class’ private
ownership and control of the economy. The SLP thus seeks to organize working
people politically and economically to replace the economic chaos and militarism
of capitalism with a worker-controlled economy that will serve our collective
needs.

A socialist transformation of society would create an economic order under
which the means of production would be socially owned and democratically
controlled
by workers through their industrial organizations. Socialism, unlike government
ownership schemes, would place power in the collective hands of the working
class, not in those of government bureaucrats.

With the elimination of the profit motive, the principle of social use
would guide production. The need would no longer exist for military spending
artificially
to stimulate the economy, or to maintain a large military machine to enforce
access to foreign markets. Under capitalism even relatively small cutbacks
in military spending could lead to increased unemployment and the creation
of economically
depressed areas. Under a social system based on production for use, the
elimination of unnecessary production would simply reduce the workweek
of the entire labor
force because the entire industrial process would reflect the needs of
the whole population.